Severe Severe is a three-piece band that has remade itself in name and style over the course of the past five years. I believe it's instructive to offer up a brief retrospective of the elements that led to the current sound and personnel of the band, so here goes:

Without gazing too far in the way-back mirror, let me introduce Nico Jordan (guitar, vocals) in the context of a band he co-fronted 8 or so years ago. Staynless garnered a pretty strong reputation in the late 90s by playing a brand of on/off aggressive guitar rock owing creative debts of gratitude to Slint, June of '44, Big Black/Shellac, and the Rye Coalition. Their days together produced a few recordings, most notable among them a full-length entitled Transistor Theory and Circuits Made Simple, engineered by Steve Albini in 1998.

While somewhat limited in appeal to those who favor machinistic instrumentals accompanied by non-melodic vocals in varying degrees of frenzy, the band showcased Nico's crisp, energetic guitar playing that, intertwined with bandmate Chris Wark's equally sound 6-string abilities, created a consonance/dissonance dynamic that defined the sound of the band. Even in Staynless, Nico favored an intricate picking style in which repeated, often arpeggiated melodic lines both ground and color the music. It is this ability to construct multifaceted guitar lines that possess unique melodic and rhythmic characteristics that makes Nico's playing best suited for a three-piece band, which I will get to later. It is also this hyper-kinetic, staccato aspect of Nico's playing that seemed to develop within the framework of Staynless, which is why you were burdened with this synopsis of a band almost entirely unrelated to the subject at hand.

While certainly possessed of enough talent among its constituent members to succeed, Staynless fell apart not long into a tour of the eastern United States. Shortly thereafter, Nico teamed up with Brad Stanfill and Kurt Amelang to form Transcontinental, which would be the first incarnation of the style and partial substance of what would later become Severe Severe. Slightly less aggressive and more instrumentally consistent by design, Transcontinental played a handful of shows over the span of a year or so, but only recorded a portion of their creative output before moving on to other bands.

Sometime in 2002, Nico decided to ask his cousin Mike Capritta (bass) to join himself and Kurt in moving to Los Angeles to form a new band. A healthy isolation allowed for some remarkable changes to occur within this trio relative to Transcontinental, which led to a nice set of songs and a new name - The Duration. While not abandoning some of the aggressive guitar playing and bombastic elements found in bands like Staynless and Transcontinental, an altogether new kind of song emerged from The Duration's time in L.A.

With a palette of influences ranging from early U2, Sonic Youth, Savage Republic, and The Cure, The Duration played with galloping energy and tightly wound emotional content that only occasionally burst into full-fledged chaos. While in L.A., Kurt developed into a first-class drummer, making use of his entire kit to construct complex and novel underpinnings for Nico's pointed, exacting guitar work. Mike Capritta also got comfortable on the bass (which he had just learned to play), countering the busy nature of Nico's playing with timely, sustained notes that made smooth the band's frequent weight-shifts and tempo changes within songs that reflected a sense of constant motion and dissociation of place consistent with an tumultuous stay in an unfamiliar city.

The Duration moved back to Memphis in the rotten, mind-melting summer of 2003, bringing with them a compelling set of songs which led to some local shows. However, nothing breaks the spirit like playing in the smoky, underventilated booze faucets that pass for Memphis rock clubs, and after playing a few sparsely attended (although enthusiatically received) shows, the band decided to call it quits.

A five-song recording is all that serves to document Severe Severe's early stint as The Duration, but it should be sought out and appreciated nevertheless. A highlight of the recording is the song "Intercalifornias" - exhibiting a peculiar time signature, the song defines the band's frustrations with its time on the west coast, but does so with some conviction. Beginning with an unnerving opening passage in the aforementioned meter, and later bursting into a tension release that begs "for a sign", it becomes apparent why the escape from L.A. was inevitable.

Throughout Nico's time in L.A., he was also working alone on a project called Victory Mansion, which developed the subtler aspects of his songwriting with softer instrumentation and the addition of drum programming and keyboards. He released two albums independently, The Year is Nitey Nite, recorded at home on his analog 8-track in 2000 and For an Unknown Friend recorded by Greg Burns (Halifax Pier/Red Sparowes) in 2001. It is through Victory Mansion that Nico gained confidence in a singing style less dependent by outbursts of violent energy, and more comfortable in his own skin as a singer. This increased sense of confidence was also apparent in The Duration, but the particular songwriting on display with Victory Mansion is most obvious when held up to the light of what is now Severe Severe.

Back to Memphis for a minute, post-Duration. Kurt and Mike took a break from playing in a band altogether, and Nico rejoined old bandmates Brad Stanfill (Transcontinental, The Coach & Four), Daniel Farris (Staynless), and yours truly to form a band called The Color Cast. Due to a confluence of bizarre circumstances, The Color Cast was able to exist just long enough to record an unsupported, unreleased full-length record before imploding completely in late 2005. Shortly before the end of The Color Cast, Nico convinced Kurt and Mike, both now living in Memphis, to rejoin him in continuing what they had abandoned two years before. They holed themselves up in a storage space just across the Mississippi River, and began writing many of the songs that comprise the record now underway under the name Severe Severe. Shortly thereafter, they packed up to Mike's stomping grounds in upstate New York, where they're now living, recording, and performing in and around Albany.

While in some sense a continuation of The Duration, Severe Severe employs what is now a fully realized, confident trio of musicians. They create a surprisingly full sound as a trio, maintaining a high energy level while never resorting to the gratuitous displays or gimmicks in presentation. Switching between guitar and keyboards while providing vocals, Nico displays that same restless motor that has defined his performances in all the bands he's fronted. Kurt has developed into a drummer on par with any you're likely to hear in a rock band, never disappointing in creativity or in execution. Mike's bass playing now serves as an independently conceived counterpoint to Nico's playing, while still contributing to the rhythmic substance of each song with the same attention to detail and driving tones that have complemented Kurt's drumming since these guys have been playing together.

Severe Severe, like The Duration, employs rhythms that sometimes require acclimation by the listener, but they reward the effort with a surprising consistency and quality over the length of a song that has matured into a particularly good live set. Among the songs to be featured on their new album, "Awakening Fire" displays some of the characteristic traits of their sound - tight, driving drumming, relentless movement in the guitar and bass punctuated by short bursts of emotional/electrical release, and the kind of economy of sound and wiry presentation that has its roots in the better post-punk bands of the early 80s.

It's no secret - this is a band that takes its inspiration from the 1980s work of bands like The Cure, Joy Division, Savage Republic, Wire, or even Mission of Burma. While a proliferation of bands in the early part of the new century repackage the seminal work produced by these artists, it is often canned, lukewarm and artificially flavored - like a room temperature Diet Shasta... sometimes worse (The Killers). The cynics among us (myself included) have reason to view with incredulity a punk rehash that appears to take itself more seriously than the genuine article ever did. However, the same criticism can be leveled at any rock band anymore in any microgenre, so compartmentalized is the music industry and jaded its supposed savants these days.

The important question is this: is it compelling? Is there substance, or am I being sold a bill of goods? I think the answer with Severe Severe is obvious. They aren't engaging in self-promotion ad nauseum at the expense of quality. Nico, Mike, and Kurt happen to think that their music, their commitment to playing it with a purpose, and their desire to make the best songs they can should be enough to get the attention of their audience. So it is a throwback that they represent, yeah - but it's a throwback not only in style, but in an entire no-frills, gimmick-free approach to writing and playing that becomes apparent when you hear them live.

By Aaron Rude